Nail polish is readily removed with pure acetone. However, acetone alone has a severe dehydrating effect upon skin, finger and toe nails, which is irritating to the former and renders the latter susceptible to cracking and breaking. Therefore, acetone-based commercial nail polish removers all contain other ingredients, e.g., water and/or oils, which lower this dehydrating effect but with the inevitable consequence that the efficacy of the polish remover is lowered. For example, Cutex (registered Trade Mark), a well known acetone-based polish remover, has about 80% of the polish removal efficacy of pure acetone. Several other commercial brands, e.g., Quickie Instant (registered Trade Mark), Unpolish (registered Trade Mark), and Dip It (registered Trade Mark), have substantially less.
It would be desirable if the nail water removal activity of aqueous acetone based polish removers which have high polish removal efficacy, e.g., those containing at least about 80% acetone and which have at least half the water removal activity of pure acetone, could be substantially lowered without adversely affecting their polish removal efficacy. To date, no such polish remover formulation is known to exist. It is an object of this invention to provide an aqueous acetone-based nail polish remover having high polish remover efficacy but less nail water removal activity than corresponding conventional polish removers. It is another object to provide a method of removing nail polish employing the novel polish removers of this invention.